


Santiago

by sheffiesharpe



Series: At Least There's The Football [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anthea is totally a ninja, Backstory, Gen, I'm really not kidding, M/M, Santiago - Freeform, all of her shoes are steel-toe now, are you sure this isn't an episode of Burn Notice?, frame story, impeccable use of prepositions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:55:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of what happened in Santiago, or When Mycroft Met Anthea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Santiago

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for violence and various kinds of unpleasantness.
> 
> Note: _güero_ is a Spanish word used to denote someone of light skin  & hair color, much like _rubio_. It is used predominantly in Mexico.

It’s late May, and Mycroft is going to be gone for a week again, maybe a little longer, and he asks Lestrade to come to his flat for a drink late in the evening before he leaves. It means that Lestrade is likely to get absolutely no sleep at all tonight, but the trade is worth it. When he arrives, though, he’s surprised to see Anthea there, too, seated in the wingback chair in the front room, a glass of scotch in her hand.

“Should I be worried?” He tries to keep his voice light, but he can’t help but feel a little nervous. Particularly when it seems like Anthea’s enjoying that reaction, just a bit. But she’s the one who pours him a glass, who holds it out, and Mycroft kisses him once before he offers Lestrade a spot next to him on the settee.

“Not at all,” Mycroft says. Mycroft has a pot of tea on the side table, one of his handleless cups cradled in his palm. The small clay pot is the one for the gunpowder green.

“But you wanted to know about Santiago.” Anthea puts her glass down, and she leans forward, her elbows on her knees. Lestrade’s never seen her sit that way, and he glances at Mycroft, but there’s none of that cautioning look this time.

“You wanted to know about Santiago,” she says, “and so I will tell you.”

***

The day crackles, the air going thick and electric with a waiting storm. In the distance, there are church bells. Sunday. _Domingo_. It is Sunday and she is Tuesday, she is _Martes_ , because there is one of them for every day of the week. When one of them doesn’t come back, there is another day tomorrow. She knows, also, that she is already the fifth Tuesday. But Domingo, there was only one Domingo. And Domingo is gone. Domingo, her friend, not the day, though they’re not supposed to have friends because that leads to this: caught, trapped, and for what? A corpse in a shallow grave two days before she’d even understood that Domingo was not coming back. Part of her wonders if they’ll put her in the same one. The dirt will not have hardened yet, would still be easy enough to move.

She flexes her fingers, and they are sore, stiff, blunted. Her left shoulder is stretched, weak-feeling. She presses herself up, carefully, onto her knees, and everything aches, but nothing is broken. Nothing, except her toes. Three on each foot. She can still feel the sharp blows of the rifle-butt. Her throat feels raw from swallowing her own screaming, but now, now she is grateful that they left her with enough digits to walk. Enough to be “useful.” Enough to break later. They don’t know that she knows nothing; the knowledge is not the point.

She pushes herself up to standing, keeps her weight well back on her heels. It feels wrong, it feels heavy, unbalanced, but it’s the only way that isn’t excruciating. And if it doesn’t have to hurt, right now, she doesn’t want it to. She knows that it’s likely going to hurt soon. That it will have to if she’s going to try to get out. At this moment, she is not certain if she is going to try. If she does, where will she go? Because she cannot go back: January will not let her. The first of them—their starting point, their center, their lightning rod—does not deal in old days, in broken things. And as her feet tell her, she is broken. She was broken, too, when Domingo did not come back, was broken when she decided to leave, to try to find the one friend she had. And she has found Domingo, and what has come of that?

There is not a window in this room, but it feels like the ground floor, the gravity of the space. And there is a barest breath of cooler air beneath the crack of the door, the way out. There are no others. That much she knows. She knows because she checked, but there are no vents, no thin points in the walls. She checked last night when she was thrown into the room because looking for a way out was better than crying. Crying, she has always known, is useless.

And now that she knows she can stand—can walk, though it hurts, though it hurts like fire and she will not take off the thin canvas shoes and she tells herself that the dark stains are mud are tar are something else anything else because if she doesn’t it will hurt too much to think about—now that she knows she can stand and walk and if she can walk, she can run, and run she will. Later. Perhaps. She folds herself into a ball, rests her head on her knees, and she listens. She thinks.

***

No one is coming for her. She knows this. She has always known this. When Jueves (it doesn’t matter which one) didn’t come back, he was _desaparecido_. They all are. They are already gone, disappeared, or they have never _been_ anyone else. She doesn’t know which category she is in; this is what she remembers: the high green places of Chile sheltering her, sheltering them all in the wake of Pinochet, of others far worse with names no one knows or that no one is willing to remember or to speak. Before that, snow, seasons on the other side of the year. There was a lake, and it was frozen across in almost all of the memories she has.

Maybe her mother is also among the rest of the _desaparecidos_. Maybe her father is in one of the unmarked graves that dot the deep places between the mountains. She has no memory of either of them. Thinking about it does not make her sad; there’s never been another way to think of it. What she thinks about now is that she doesn’t want to join them; wherever they are, she wants no part of that. Even Domingo, even seeing the grave—they made her look yesterday, and she did not have to see a body to believe them—she decides: she doesn’t want to join them.

And that means only one thing: getting out. It will require going through the door, the door she cannot open. That she knows. There is a padlock on the other side; she heard it close.

From the far side of the door, she hears another opening, a closing, muffled voices. A shout that does not come from either of the men she knows are here.

She is surprised: the _güero_ is still alive. Before they broke her toes, she’d seen him, pale and sweating and dirt-streaked, wearing a cream-coloured suit. Miserable, yes, but not bleeding. Important, then. Valuable whole. She cups her aching fingers against the door, listens. Not bleeding _yet_. She wonders which one of them will be first, when they will start to mean it. The thought makes her toes flex—makes them _try_. The feeling is as sour as bile in her stomach.

But this room is small, the floor solid, is dirt, has no drains. If they are going to kill her, they will not do it here. They did not break her toes here. So she waits longer, listens more closely. The _güero_ keeps switching languages. Some she knows, some she has never heard before. He speaks in Russian, and she knows he’s quoting from books, sad, sad things about doomed men, but the men who are hearing him don’t understand. She knows this. And only one of them, the one with the mustache, knows the English he speaks. She knew that before she was taken. These men are not educated, they are not sophisticated. That is why they will kill her, sooner or later, but, she is certain, that they know enough not to do the same to the _güero_. Yet. Which of them, she wonders again, will be first?

His voice is pleasant, though, while it lasts. He quotes Shakespeare in English, talks about madeleines and a parrot in French. Sometimes they interrupt him: _Who are you? Who are you? Who?_ That is the question with no answer. She is Martes, Tuesday, one more, one more day. And the man will run out of languages eventually. They will get bored with this game, or they will find someone who knows enough to know what and who it is they have found. Someone who will ask the right questions. And that will be a shame because she likes his voice. Even when it cuts off—a crack, a grunt, a yelp, and then quiet—there is the echo of him in this silence. It doesn’t start again.

She waits for the footsteps. She thinks this should be harder, that her heart should race. It doesn’t. She only wishes her feet didn’t hurt so, that she dared take off her shoes. She cannot believe that _this_ is what stalls her, of all things. When the man in the drab fatigues opens the door, she is sitting, facing it, and she is almost laughing, thinking on the wreck of her toes.

“You will not be laughing, boy,” the man says. It hurts when he makes her stand, and she wants to fight, but there is the barrel of a gun pressed to the short-cropped hair at the base of her skull. She will not give them a reason to shoot her in the back of the head. She will make him look her in the eye when it happens. Right now, he is barely looking at her at all. Boy, scrawny, stupid boy, he is saying. Too young, what a shame, should be lifting skirts but will now die a virgin because he was in the wrong place, poking his nose. Like rats, everywhere.

I am not so young, she wants to say. She is, at fifteen, one of the oldest. She has lived this long, long enough that she remembers nothing before it; she is ancient. _I am not a boy_ is the thing she is not tempted to say. Better to die facing the grave you just dug for yourself, Domingo said, than on your back in any bed. Domingo had shown her how to bind her small breasts, and her body is lean and hard under the dirty shirt and trousers. Nothing fits, anyway, everything masked. The rime of dust hides the smoothness of her cheeks. No one bathes a captive, a nobody, the ones no one will look for when the hammer falls.

The man keeps the gun where it is, and they go down the hall. A staircase cuts into the hallway, and there seems to be a breath of air descending the stairs: an open window, somewhere. She will not walk quickly and he doesn’t make her. It’s not mercy: it’s the temperature, the weight of the air.

The door to the _güero_ ’s room opens in front of them, and there is the man in the black beret, the one who’d held the rifle with its heavy stock, the one who’d brought it down on her feet so crushingly precisely. He leans half away from the doorframe, sighting down the hall even as he cranes his neck back into the room. She keeps her eyes on the ground until the man behind her yanks the collar of her shirt. She chokes, her head snapping back, and the gun’s muzzle skids on her sweat-slick skin. As soon as the barrel is beside her neck, no longer behind, no longer pointing through, she ducks, snaps her hands up to grab his wrists, to yank him forward.

His finger stutters on the trigger; the pistol discharges beside her ear and the whole world rings with the sound, nearly blinding her with its volume in the narrow hallway. The man in the black beret lurches, falling back before he catches himself, before he hauls himself into the room where the _güero_ is. She slams her elbow back, into the first man’s nose, plucks the gun from his grip, points, fires. At this range, there is no missing. She flings herself at the door.

When her foot makes contact with the closing door, the pain is a lance, and when she stumbles into the room where the _güero_ is, her weight tipping forward onto her broken toes, the pain whites her vision. The pain, or the man surging forward, the pale fabric filling the space in front of her because the man in the black beret kicks the chair over, kicks him at her, and she dives away as the man in the black beret throws a knife. It clatters to the floor, not meant for throwing and his hand untrained. He’d had a gun yesterday. He’d had the rifle. He does not have it now. She raises the pistol, and from the corner of her eye, she sees the _güero_ tuck one ear against his shoulder, hunch the other to at least try to protect against the sound. He doesn’t turn his face away, though, and that surprises her. The man in the black beret’s mouth moves but she can’t hear what he’s saying. Can’t hear or won’t hear—they’re the same thing. The recoil rocks her, and the man in the black beret slides redly down the wall.

Her eyes flick toward the door. Someone will have heard. Someone else will come. She checks the pistol’s clip. She has only two bullets remaining, and she must leave. She must leave now. But something makes her right the chair and the man in his cream-coloured suit. It isn’t easy, pushing him up, His body is soft, the whole of him more weighty than he seems; he would be tall if he were standing. As it is, his head hangs, and his mouth bleeds, and his wrists are raw where they’re tied behind his back, held to the chair.

“Please,” he says. “Help me.” His Spanish is perfect, accentless. “If you get me out,” he says, “you will be repaid.” His teeth grit. “Or shoot me. Don’t leave me like this.”

She actually holds the gun to his head. No one repays anyone, except in suffering.

He lowers his eyes. “Thank you,” he says. His exhale is long, complete, and his shoulders tremble. But he doesn’t move, he doesn’t flinch, even when she pulls the hammer back. That she doesn’t expect. He hums. She doesn’t know what the tune is.

She still likes his voice, even with her ears ringing from the gunshots. If she shoots him, she’ll only have one bullet left.

She cuts the ropes with the fallen knife, and the man’s knees buckle when he finally stands, but only once. He isn’t hurt badly, then, and though he’s frightened, the stink of old and new sweat on him, he doesn’t give in to it. When she goes to the door, he follows, silent. He has to duck to get through the doorway, the top of his head nearly brushing the ceiling.

To the right is the main exit, the way they were both brought in. If anyone comes, it will be from that direction, and she hears shouting, banging. The doors on the building’s front. She’d been shoved into them last night. They must be locked from the inside, the keyholders now dead. But that is not enough to stop anyone with a mind to get in; the locks will not withstand a bullet or the finding of someone else with a key. The staircase, then: just a little way, and then there must be an exit, a window. The building isn’t tall, none of them are tall. The _güero_ will survive a two-storey jump if he needs to. She doesn’t allow herself to think of what that will feel like, her feet as they are. She only climbs the stairs, and the man following puts his feet exactly where she puts hers.

Upstairs, she finds the window, and overhead, the clouds brew thick and grey, the raindrops quickening. “The rain,” she says, “will be on our side.” The distance to the ground, too—it’s not even twelve feet. “Go,” she says. “You land, you run. Do not stop.” She points to the alley. He hesitates, crouched in the open space, his feet hanging. She pushes him. He lands, falls down, but when he gets up, he runs where she told him to. She waits until she cannot see him before she jumps, too.

When she lands, the pain blossoms red and ugly, turning her vision into a close black tunnel, and she cannot _see_ where she is going when she lifts her knees. She cannot see, but she goes, because she feels a bullet tunnel earth beside her, hears the report of the gun two steps later, and that’s backwards, but everything is backwards, and then the sky opens.

She catches up to the man faster than she thinks she should. He waited. He is not supposed to wait. She shoves him again, and he hits the wall of a building, but he follows, the sound of their splashing footsteps drowned in the deluge. Thunder cracks and the sky flashes white, and they run far enough that they find others doing the same: a knot of little boys barefoot and shrieking as they cut through the puddles, a woman sheltering her head with her sodden mantilla, an old man walking as though there is no rain. They look up, look away. There is no help here.

No help at all. There were bells, there will be a church. The doors will be open. She turns them again and again, and the only consolation is that the people they pass, the ones who offer no help, will not offer help to anyone looking for them. Here, no one sees anything. There is another set of bells—a new hour—and it rings twice, from two directions. Two churches. The second peal is a little behind the first, the sound soured as though the bell itself is cracked. They both turn toward that one, and though he gasps for breath and she swears she feels the small bones in her feet grate against each other, they go.

And the doors are open. They are not the only ones who are sheltering here, either. There are two nuns, their hands already folded in prayer, kneeling before the wooden Virgin, and the priest is speaking with a young woman holding an infant to her chest. Two young men—her age, she thinks—watch the lightning flash from the broken corner of the window. The stained glass cross is held together by criss-crossing stripes of electrical tape. It barely lets in light.

Even in the dimness, though, she can see the water spreading from her soaked shoes is dark, reddened. The room spins, and she puts her back against the wall. It feels better to do that, anyway, makes it easier to decide: what next? The _güero_ she could leave here. This is as much safety as she can offer him. The men who’d found him before will look here, of course, eventually, but not until they have gone forward much further. She puts her head back against the plaster and waits for him to say something, to say, “Take me with you.” She waits for an answer to the other question: where is _she_ going? Gravity pulls her down the wall, and she sits, eyes closed.

The _güero_ speaks. Her eyes slit open. He is not speaking to her. He is speaking to the priest. They know each other. That is evident immediately, though no one else pays them any notice. They are turned so she cannot see their mouths, and the thunder drowns out more than half of their words, the echo in her ears, the rushing blood, the pain—she doesn’t know what they say.

Domingo’s voice in her head: _pay attention_.

 _I am sorry_ , Martes thinks. _I can’t. Not now._ Her lungs burn. Her throat tastes like blood.

The priest leaves the room, returns with his arms full of cloth. The _güero_ comes back to her, speaks from the full distance of his height.

“Come with me, now.” His breath is still a little ragged, and his chest heaves, but his voice is wholly certain. He offers a hand. She ignores it, pushes herself up, and it was worse, sitting, even for a moment, because now standing is so much harder. She remembers this feeling from years ago, _again, again, again, do not rest, you cannot rest because when you stop you cannot start again_. Her knuckles ache with the memory. But she takes the bundle of fabric.

“They’ll be looking for a young man,” he says. “I would prefer they didn’t find him.” Something about his face says he knows the truth, but he doesn’t say anything about it, only holds open the door to the small confessional.

She changes her clothes in the dark, doesn’t unbind her breasts, wipes clean her face as well as she can with her rain-soaked shirt. She does not ask for forgiveness. She shrouds her head in a dark shawl, too, and when she comes back out into the light, the skirt covers her bleeding feet, her wet trousers, her shoes, and the shirt is cut low, shows the band across her chest.

The _güero_ is wearing black trousers that look uncomfortably tight around his middle, but the shirt and jacket over them cover that. Without glancing up, he tells her—very quietly—to take off the binding.

When she comes back out, she covers the bare skin at her chest with the edge of the shawl, but he’s not looking at her at all. He goes to the far side of the small sanctuary with the priest, and she is left alone for a moment. But only for a moment. Then he is leading her out through a back door, and the pain is worse now that the adrenaline has worn off, the rain’s sudden cool making everything stiffen and ache.

Outside, there is a car waiting, a man driving who looks like another priest but whom she is certain is not. She gets in behind him only because it is easier than not, easier than staying, easier than having to do something else, and the scruffy fringes of the city turn into its heart, the buildings growing taller, the streets widening, and the car stops outside of an awning-fronted hotel. This time, he takes her hand as she steps out of the car, doesn’t let her refuse. His arm curls around her waist, and her stomach clenches tight even as he supports some of her weight, enough of it that she doesn’t grunt with each step. He reaches with one hand, nudges the edges of the shawl behind her shoulders.

The man at the front desk glances from the _güero_ to her chest and back. He never looks at her face, and he hands a key to the _güero_. No one says anything about the lack of luggage, about the bruises.

The elevator is slow, and the pain somehow worse as the elevation climbs. But the man doesn’t touch her again, only walks down the hall. He holds the door open for her, and when it closes, the sound is heavy, slow, final. He turns the lock and slides the chain home, and he doesn’t seem surprised when she takes the pistol from beneath her shirt. He only walks to the telephone sitting on another table across the room, dials something, and speaks, in English, a few sentences about Argentine football that can be nothing but code.

There _are_ two tables: the room, she sees, opens up into another. What is around the next corner, she does not know. The room is a suite, and the man regards her with a tilted head. His mouth is swollen, and the hours are pulling more bruises up from his skin. But when he speaks, the words are all perfectly clear again.

“I know you cannot afford to believe me, but you are safe here. As safe as you could be anywhere.” He keeps his distance. “You are free to leave if you wish, but if you leave, I will not be here if you intend to return. If you leave now, I cannot help you. I would like to. I owe you that much.”

She says nothing. He seems to take that for assent to something, and then there is a knock at the door. They both startle, though he opens the door without checking who it is. The only thing he says is, “Thank you,” and he steps back into the room with a large duffle.

He removes two bags from the larger. One he puts to the side, the other, smaller, he carries into the lavatory. “Come along,” he calls, and it’s curiosity that makes her follow, though she goes slowly, very slowly, and the water runs.

“Sit.” He gestures to the edge of the bathtub. The bath itself is deep, already filling with water. He rolls up his sleeves and washes his hands, pulls on a pair of latex gloves. “I would offer you something for the pain, but I know you wouldn’t accept.” He crouches beside the bath, and it looks like that hurts. She tells herself he will not see even so much as a flinch.

But she cannot help the hiss of breath as he puts his hand on one sneaker. He edges it down over her heel, slow and careful, and she shoves him back. She takes a deep breath and yanks off both shoes as fast as she can. If there was anything in her stomach, it would come up now. But it’s done, and she can see the broken, swollen skin, the mud and dirt, the blood still seeping around the blackening nails.

He lifts her feet with a hand across the back of her ankles, settles them carefully in the water. It’s perfectly room temperature, only faintly cool on her skin, but it hurts. All of it hurts. She tries instead to concentrate on the patterns in the water, the thin ribbons of red and brown, and the _güero_ washes her feet as gently as he can. She can see him trying. It would be easier, she thinks, if he didn’t try to be gentle. Instead, she looks at him.

The back of his neck is streaked with dirt and sweat, but under the edge of his collar he is pale enough that she knows he has not been in Santiago long. With his accent—the utter lack of one—he might be from anywhere. His face suggests Europe, his paleness, money. But he’d listened to her.

He’d not questioned one step. She thinks about that instead of the unsettling shift—the feeling that goes all the way up through her shin, her thigh, into her stomach—where the split halves of one toenail grate against each other. The man drains the water from the bath and fills it shallowly again, and this time, there is no fresh grit, only a slight pink halo around her feet.

“If you would like to bathe,” he says. “We’ll splint them after.” He stands, leaves her alone with the plush towels, and before he closes the door, he produces another skirt, a shirt from the bag, undergarments. He leaves both plain cotton panties and boxer shorts. The room echoes with the running water, and it reminds her of the sound of the rain before. Working her trouser-cuffs down over her feet is almost as painful as taking off the shoes.

The feeling of being clean is nearly enough to balance the pain, though, and she fills the bath twice, scrubs away the stale sweat in her hair. There are laddered bruises up both sides of her ribs, more around the tops of her arms. Tomorrow will be worse. This morning, there had been no concept of tomorrow, though, so whatever tomorrow will be is still better than it might have been.

Drying herself is hard, and it is harder still to dress without jostling her toes. She puts on both pairs of underwear, slides on the skirt over them. Her feet leave more pinked smears on the towel.

She nudges open the door, and the man comes back. The ointment doesn’t sting, at least, when he bandages the broken skin, and though the splinting is awful, it is better when it’s done. He offers, again, two white tablets from a small brown bottle, and she refuses again. He seems strangely pleased by that.

She picks her way back into the room, leans against the wall.

He picks up the other bag he’d taken from the duffle and carries it into the toilet. Before he closes the door, he says, “You are welcome to rest. If you prefer to leave, you may. You’ll find whatever you might need in the bag—clothes, shoes, money. If you prefer to stay, the bed is yours.” And then there is the heavy wood between them.

Everything that he said is true: there are trousers, too, a man’s shirt; the shoes are even large enough to accommodate the bandages, and a thick roll of pesos is nested in one of them. Bandages, more ointment. She sits at the desk, watches the door to the toilet. Near an hour passes, according to the clock beside the bed.

He comes out freshly shaven, wearing an impeccable camel-coloured suit. This one fits as though it were made for him, and the bruises have been covered with make-up. She can’t see it, but it’s the only explanation, and she thinks his hair is darker than it had been, just a bit. The only sign that he wasn’t just in an office somewhere this morning is the split in his lower lip, a faint swelling at his jaw. And if she hadn’t seen him hours before, she isn’t certain she could see that now, given the softness of his chin, his cheeks.

“Who are you?”It’s only the rigidity of the chair, the unforgiving wooden arms keeping her awake. She is surprised when he answers.

“My name is Mycroft Holmes.”

She is more surprised that she thinks he is telling the truth. He doesn’t ask what her name is. He lies on the sofa, his fingertips steepled under his chin. His eyes are closed, but she can tell he isn’t sleeping. He isn’t sleeping, but he might as well be, as little attention as he is paying her. Somehow, that is comforting. She walks, on her heels, as best she can, to the wide bed, and lies down on top of the bedspread, still wearing the fresh skirt and blouse he’d given her. The loose fabric around her legs is strange, but it’s easier with the bulky bandages, the splints. The pistol and its two bullets are beneath the pillow.

She closes her eyes, too.

***

She wakes with a start to find him looking at her from across the room. He pays no mind to the gun in her hand.

“Forgive me,” he says, and he takes a pocketwatch from his jacket pocket, glances at it. “But the housekeeper will be here in three minutes and it would be advantageous to reinforce the ruse.”

“Ruse?” For all that she’d woken quickly, the room swims now.

He grins sharply with one side of his mouth when she answers. He’d been speaking in English, and she’d answered him in it. Then his demeanor changes again—he is almost apologetic. “Trust me,” he says, and his fingertips catch the sleeve of her blouse, bare her shoulder just as the key turns in the lock. He leans in, his face beside hers, but he doesn’t kiss her. He is not touching her anywhere, but it must certainly look as though he is.

When the door eases open, and the housekeeper’s voice rings out, it makes sense. She clutches his shoulders, and she feels him tense. It’s strange, very strange, and the housekeeper turns the corner, backs away in a flurry of apology. When the door closes again, he backs away, straightens.

He tells her to continue her rest. He walks out, and she only puts her head back down.

When she wakes again, there is food, but he is not there. She eats, is ravenous, and circles the confines of the room, testing her feet. Without the adrenaline, with so much stillness, everything is indeed worse, but she makes herself do it anyway, supporting herself with the furniture, the windowsills, to make it bearable.

She goes through the duffle bag, and everything is still there. His own bag, too, is still there, but it’s empty, save socks and drawers; he’s hung up every item in the small closet, three impeccable suits. So much expensive fabric. She goes back to sleep: when it’s available, take it.

When he comes back, a few hours later, he doesn’t try to sneak back into the room, which is good, because the gun is already in her hand, and he’s carrying another bag. This one is also full of clothing, by its shape, and she wonders how many garments one person can want. And then he starts putting things out on the table: skirt and blouse, khaki shorts and a t-shirt, brown work trousers and a shirt to match, a black suit, and undergarments: boxer shorts and panties and y-fronts and lace, a white bra, a black one like runners and bikers and tennis players wear, a plain vest, a white half-shirt with a zipper up its front. A pair of trainers. Simple black brogues.

He says, “It’s not a very good set of choices yet, but at least you do have choices.” He doesn’t seem to mean it as chastisement when he catches her looking to see if anything else comes from the bag. She thinks he’s serious. The word “yet” crackles behind her eyes.

She touches the suit, the crisp black cloth. The trousers of it, though are not wide enough for her to want to try to push her bandaged feet through. “May I change my mind?”

“As often as you like.”

She takes the shorts and the work shirt, the y-fronts and the half-shirt to bind her breasts. She thanks him, and when she is dressed like this, she thinks she should feel much more like herself.

She looks at the mirror, the violet tinge along her cheek, circles that are still under her eyes. She hardens her gaze, and there is _Martes_. When she covers her short hair with the _mantilla_ from before, it seems as though she looks at someone else. There are more options on the table outside: she could be anyone. She presses her palms into the white ceramic of the sink basin. She could be anyone.

***

He speaks to her in Spanish and English and Quechua and French, separately at first, and then strung together, the words and phrases mixed and somehow it makes sense in her ears. She answers. And he smiles. It is a real one, she thinks, from a man who must have many that are not real, one that he has to mean because his lip has not completely healed yet and it must hurt. He is not accustomed to dealing with that. He winces when he drinks, holds his pen in his left hand to write. His handwriting doesn’t seem any different that way—she has made it a point to read what he’s left on the small desk in the suite, short cryptic notes, and for reasons she doesn’t understand, that seems to make him happy rather than angry—but the cuts and bruising are on his right hand and there are none on the left. She knows he didn’t get a chance to take a second swing. She knows whatever he threw did not land well. And no one who is desperate takes his one chance with his weak side.

They have been there for three days when he says to her, without preamble, “You weren’t afraid.” He is looking through a small notebook, the one he keeps in his jacket pocket. He never leaves it behind when he is gone, and even in the suite, he keeps his jacket on.

“Death comes to all of us.” At his expression, the twist in his features above the little book, she forces a slight smile. “It is easier,” she concedes, “if we do not see him coming.”

***

It is remarkable, being cocooned in the bed, in the thick, thick blankets, the way the air-conditioner turns the room blissfully cool. The city lights are a dim glow through the window, and she slips out of bed, tucks herself between the long curtain and the frame to watch the night. Her feet still hurt, but it’s manageable.

Mycroft is asleep on the sofa in the next room. The hum of the climate control covers the sound of his breathing. She had offered him the bed, too, but he refused, citing odd sleeping habits, strange hours. In the past few days, she’s seen that proven true. She’s woken up to find him awake several times. But tonight, he sleeps soundly, and this is the fourth hour. Two hours ago, she’d gotten to the edge of the sofa, put her hands a centimeter from his neck. He didn’t wake. It is somehow reassuring, and shocking, but she slept in front of him first. At the time, it had nothing to do with trusting him and everything to do with being too exhausted to care. That is not the case now.

Standing here, in the hours after midnight, too, she feels oddly at peace. The curtains are close at her back, and if she supports herself against the sill just so, she can stand wholly without pain. She lets her eyes unfocus until the passing traffic becomes a red and ivory blur, everything reduced to smudges of color against the room’s white silence. She hasn’t been outside since they’d come here, and she is grateful that she didn’t have to—it’s going to be weeks until she can walk properly again, longer still if she undoes the progress they’ve done. Right now, though, she is not going to think about weeks in the future. Right now, she focuses on the flecks of light on the far side of the window.

The quiet _snick_ of the slowly tumbling lock is as loud as a gunshot. From the edge of the curtain, she can see the door shift inward, but there is no sliver of light from the hallway. That has gone dark, and it hasn’t been dark any night before. The chain slithers, cut, along the frame, too. The silhouette of the man is capped by a pale face, and he passes by the curtain where she is hidden to stand beside the bed.

His arm draws away from his chest, and she knows what he is doing, hears the quiet _zzt_ _zzt_ _zzt_ of silenced rounds cutting through the pillows and blankets she had gathered along one edge. He steps back from that doorway, turns for the interior study, where the sofa is.

She slips from behind the curtain. There is no time to take the pistol from beneath her pillow. It will be just like earlier tonight. She has only to cross the distance faster than the assassin must and she must not be heard. She picks her way across the carpet, behind him, and the man’s steps slow as he gets closer. He knows Mycroft. It hits all at once—he knows him. He knows him, and the gun is still in his hand, is leveling, and it doesn’t matter who he is.

She lunges, clamps one hand on his chin, the other on the back of his head, and the motion is easy: push and pull. It’s the pop of bone that wakes Mycroft, the pop of bone and her yelp when the falling gun clips the last toe on her right foot.

And then Mycroft is awake all at once; she never sees him stand. The tableside lamp is far too bright, even though the yellow glow was dismissed by Mycroft as insufficient to read by.

He looks from the body to her, and his first question is about the welfare of her foot.

“It’s fine.” She answers and now they are both looking at the body. She thinks it is the not-priest who drove the car, but the memory will not sharpen, all of it blurred by ache. There is a faint scent of urine, and Mycroft’s eyebrows furrow, as though he’s annoyed by the latent bodily function.

She wants to laugh. It comes out as a cough, and she backs away. She has to know if she was right: “You know him?”

He nods. “And isn’t that interesting,” he says. He crouches beside the body, the way the man’s head is turned too far over his shoulder where he’d fallen—she is surprised that he isn’t squeamish about it. He doesn’t even seem particularly shaken, now, which seems strange for a man who was half a breath from assassination, from a man who was visibly frightened those days ago. But the danger is past now. He was perfectly calm in the church, too.

He picks up the gun, puts it into her hands. Stranger still: if someone hired this man to kill him, then Mycroft’s death is valuable to yet another person. But he puts the weapon into her palm. And he goes to the phone. He never speaks at all this time, only presses a sequence of numbers before returning to the sofa to sit.

“It seems that my time here is at a close. And I am,” he says, “most indebted to you.”

She doesn’t contradict him. He seems pleased.

“Whatever you wish in recompense, simply name it.”

She says nothing, and he waits. It isn’t that she’s being coy, trying to see exactly how much it is that he means that; she’s just never considered the question, even though this makes the second time he’s offered. She doesn’t remember ever considering it. That was, according to January, why she was the best of them. But she did leave, and she did fail, because there was something that she wanted: there was Domingo. But Mycroft Holmes cannot give her friend back. Minutes tick past, and the corpse on the floor is still there, and still he waits.

She says, “I don’t know.”

“If I might make a suggestion—” And the suggestion becomes twofold, threefold: She could stay in Chile. She will have money, identification, a home if she wants it. A home of her own. She tries not to gape: he’s offering to buy her a house. But she shakes her head before he even finishes. There is nothing for her here. He repeats the offer, substitutes America. Canada. Very nearly anywhere. He says Sweden, Japan with a certain fondness. She thinks of the frozen pond, the cut of skates, of skis. But she cannot think of setting up house in any of those. Of doing so anywhere.

He nods at her negation. He says she has talent. He says, “I have contacts in the CIA.” The way he says it suggests that they were not the ones who sent this man to kill him.

“You’re not American.” He simply isn’t. “But you know them.” He gives her a look as though to say _all of them?_ and she glares.

He smoothes his tie. “Right now, I am working with the CIA.”

“ _For_ the CIA.” In the years she has been in Chile, the Americans have been everywhere. No one is supposed to know and everybody does.

“I don’t misuse my prepositions.”

She pauses for a moment. Considering. “Are you working _through_ the CIA?”

That lopsided grin again. “Well said.” He doesn’t answer the question, though. That means yes.

“ _In_ the CIA?” Maybe that’s a stretch—he’s not American, but he’d offered her the chance, and she is not American, either, most likely. If he is inside, from which side did he enter?

“No,” he says. “And _of_ , _from_ , and _to_ the CIA are ridiculous, thank you.” Which means: stop.

She does. And he poses the question again, adds that he thinks she’d do well there, and it could be immediate—the Americans are here. In Santiago, certainly. In this hotel? She doesn’t know. But the offer makes her think a moment, but she answers neither yes nor no nor maybe because he’s holding something back. She’s not sure how she can tell, but she knows it. He’s waiting for something.

One fingertip on his left hand taps a button on his open jacket. “Or,” he says, “you could enter my employ.”

She has to bite down the immediate yes. She can see that he knows the answer already, and saying it first, saying it right now, is not correct.

When she asks what that means, he nods. “That,” he says, “is a very good question to ask.”

***

“And you are,” Anthea says, finishing her drink, “the first to hear all of it.” She sits back, her legs crossed neatly at the knee again, and for a moment, he barely recognizes her. He looks at her shoes, and they’re closed-toe, and she sees him look.

He opens his mouth to say thank you, but he can’t get the words out. He closes his mouth, and he nods. His glass contains mostly melted ice, and he sucks one cold chip until it’s gone. He glances at Mycroft. “Could we have a minute?”

Mycroft nods and he walks out of the room. The door to his bedroom closes—for privacy, Lestrade knows. And then it is only him and Anthea, and when he stands, she stands. He takes a step, and she squares her shoulders, and it isn’t until that point that he sees what it must seem like to her.

“No,” he says, “not—” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Means a lot, telling me all this.” When he looks at her, she shrugs.

“You should know.” Her arms fold across her chest. “Of all people, you should know.”

He wasn’t expecting that, but that’s not what he fully meant. “I want to thank you,” he says, “for looking after him. I didn’t say it before.” Without either of them saying anything, he knows that these were not the last times she’s had to do similar. That couldn’t be the case or she wouldn’t still be with him. And she wouldn’t thank him for thinking it, but he looks at her, and he sees the young woman, the child, even as he knows she’s nothing like. He’s heard of resistances all over the globe, conscription of child soldiers. Neither Mycroft nor Anthea gave any indication of sides—his gut says she’d likely not really known herself. There _aren’t_ proper sides in conflicts like that. That was her childhood. It’s not possible to have _been_ a child and be what she is by these few years. And in the years she’s been with Mycroft—the things she knows now aren’t part of the then he’s just heard about. There would have been more training of sorts—more languages, the way she carries herself. There couldn’t have been much of a reprieve; different—better—circumstances, but no reprieve. He cannot help but think of his nieces. And yet—he wouldn’t want it otherwise. No matter how selfish it is, Anthea’s life has kept Mycroft’s. The thought should sicken him, and it doesn’t. He is too grateful, right now.

“Thank you.” He’s becoming a skipping record, but it lets him get the next words out. His throat is dry. “You’ve done for him—a lot of things I couldn’t. Can’t.”

“You didn’t know him then.” Her voice is gently mocking— _of course you couldn’t_.

“But I know him now, and that’s your doing.” More or less. He swallows. “He is,” he says, “very dear to me.” And that’s true, but it’s not all of it. He shakes his head hard. “No. I love—” The word crackles in his throat. He tries again. “I love him, and I don’t _like_ this system, but I don’t want to lose him. I want you to fight like hell for him.” And he means it.

She nods, a fraction of an inch, the ghost of a smile playing at her lips.

When he closes the distance between them, when he reaches, she eyes him warily, but he wraps his arms around her shoulders, embraces her. Her folded arms are still between them, her spine rigid, but she doesn’t shove him away. Her head tilts toward him, and then her arms move, and her palms come to rest on his biceps, just for a moment, before she takes a step back. “Good night, Greg.” The door makes no sound when it closes behind her. He stands there a moment before he gathers up the empty glasses, the teapot, the cup. When everything is clean, is drying in the dish strainer, he takes another deep breath. He turns the deadbolt, turns off the lights, and walks down the hall, to the room where Mycroft is.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [longer ago in Santiago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599201) by [sheffiesharpe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheffiesharpe/pseuds/sheffiesharpe)




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